《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 12 (23):偶遇罗马老太

There are spontaneous conversation classes everywhere. Today, I was sitting on a park bench when a tiny old woman in a black dress came over, roosted down beside me and started bossing me around about something. I shook my head, muted and confused. I apologized, saying in very nice Italian, "I'm sorry, but I don't speak Italian," and she looked like she would've smacked me with a wooden spoon, if she'd had one. She insisted: "You do understand!" (Interestingly, she was correct. That sentence, I did understand.) Now she wanted to know where I was from. I told her I was from New York, and asked where she was from. Duh—she was from Rome. Hearing this, I clapped my hands like a baby. Ah, Rome! Beautiful Rome! I love Rome! Pretty Rome! She listened to my primitive rhapsodies with skepticism. Then she got down to it and asked me if I was married. I told her I was divorced. This was the first time I'd said it to anyone, and here I was, saying it in Italian. Of course she demanded, "Perche?" Well . . . "why" is a hard question to answer in any language. I stammered, then finally came up with "L'abbiamo rotto" (We broke it).

随处可见自发的会话课。今天，我坐在公园板凳上的时候，有个身穿黑衣的小老太婆走过来，在我身边坐下，对我呼来唤去地说着什么。我摇头，无言而疑惑。我道歉，用完美的意大利语说：“真抱歉，我不会说意大利语。”她的样子像是要拿木杓揍我似的，假如她手边有的话。她断然地说：“你明明懂啊！”（有趣的是，她没说错。我确实懂这句子。）然后她想知道我是哪里人。我跟她说我是纽约人，并问她是哪里人。这还用说——她是罗马人。听了回话，我像孩子似的拍起手来。“啊，罗马！美丽的罗马！我爱罗马！漂亮的罗马！”她听着我原始的赞颂，流露出怀疑的神色。接着她问我结婚了没。我告诉她我已离婚。这是我第一次用意大利语告诉其他人这件事。当然啰，她继续问：“Perch?”这个嘛……“为什么”是个很难回答的问题，无论用哪一种语言。我支支吾吾，最后想出了“L”（我们婚姻破裂）。

She nodded, stood up, walked up the street to her bus stop, got on her bus and did not even turn around to look at me again. Was she mad at me? Strangely, I waited for her on that park bench for twenty minutes, thinking against reason that she might come back and continue our conversation, but she never returned. Her name was Celeste, pronounced with a sharp ch, as in cello.

她点点头，站起身来，穿过街去等公车，然后搭上公车而去，甚至没回来再看我一眼。她是否生我的气？说也奇怪，我就坐在那张公园板凳上等她等了二十分钟，反思她可能回来继续跟我对话的理由，她却没再回来。她名叫雀蕾丝特（Celeste），发音如“雀”。

Later in the day, I found a library. Dear me, how I love a library. Because we are in Rome, this library is a beautiful old thing, and within it there is a courtyard garden which you'd never have guessed existed if you'd only looked at the place from the street. The garden is a perfect square, dotted with orange trees and, in the center, a fountain. This fountain was going to be a contender for my favorite in Rome, I could tell immediately, though it was unlike any I'd seen so far. It was not carved of imperial marble, for starters. This was a small green, mossy, organic fountain. It was like a shaggy, leaking bush of ferns. (It looked, actually, exactly like the wild foliage growing out of the head of that praying figure which the old medicine man in Indonesia had drawn for me.) The water shot up out of the center of this flowering shrub, then rained back down on the leaves, making a melancholy, lovely sound throughout the whole courtyard.

当天稍晚，我找到一家图书馆。天哪，我真爱图书馆。因为在罗马，这所图书馆是个美丽的古物，当中有个花园中庭，若只从街上注视图书馆，你永远猜不到中庭的存在。正方形的花园点缀着橘树，中央有喷泉。我立刻知道，它将成为我最爱的罗马喷泉之一，尽管它跟我至今看过的都不相同。首先，它不是大理石雕刻的喷泉。而是一座绿色、长满青苔、接近大自然的小型喷泉。像一株丛杂的蕨类植物。（事实上，它看起来就跟印尼药师画给我的那尊祈神人像头上冒出的繁茂枝叶一模一样。）水从这丛盛开的灌木中央喷溅出来，而后回洒到叶子上，发出哀伤、优美的声音，充塞整个庭园。

I found a seat under an orange tree and opened one of the poetry books I'd purchased yesterday. Louise Gluck. I read the first poem in Italian, then in English, and stopped short at this line:

我在一棵橘树下找到座位，打开昨天买的其中 一本诗集。格丽克。我读第一首诗，先读意大利文，再读英文，在这一行顿住：

Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana . . .

"From the center of my life, there came a great fountain . . ."

Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana... ‚从我的生命中央，冒出一股大泉…… 

I set the book down in my lap, shaking with relief.

Eat, Pray, Love

我把书搁在腿上，因欣慰而颤抖。